Ramesh Balsekar 1917 - 2009

Ramesh Balsekar the great Advaita master, has died. Click the heading for some photos of Ramesh and here for a letter from Wayne Liquorman

The Big Issue

Photo by Froge on Flickr

I have always admired John Bird and The Big Issue which he started 18 years ago to help homeless people earn a little money and so get off the streets. It's been a brilliant success and has helped countless homeless people. At the same time it gives them - instead of begging - a public face that encourages people to treat them as human beings worthy of help.

Now through Centrepoint one can also sponsor a room for only £12 a month in which a homeless person can live and receive support - and even hold down a job (which usually requires an address) while they get back on their feet. The donor has the added satisfaction of getting regular e-mails about the person living in the sponsored room and can take a 'virtual' tour of it on the internet.

Charities like Centrepoint (which manages The Big Issue) and Fine Cell, which helps prisoners in jail by giving them needlework cushions and embroidories to make and sell, are a great advance on simple tin-rattling charities, where you rarely have much feel for what your money is doing.

Favourite Places

As a counterpoint to Winchester Cathedral, which makes up in length what it lacks in height, I was lucky enough to pass nearby Salisbury Cathedral, which has the tallest spire in England. Click the photo for a better view.

Drapers' Almshouse Outing to Winchester 2009

The Drapers' almshouse outings this year were for the first time to Winchester, a slightly lengthy journey for Queen Elizabeth's and Walter’s Close who had to navigate across London, but both took place on fine autumn days which got progressively warmer after a cloudy start, and were greatly enjoyed.

Unusually, this time residents were given a guided tour - of Winchester Cathedral - immortalised for most of the older residents in song. The beauty of the architecture is inspiring and the whole structure makes up in length what it lacks in height (it has the longest nave in Europe).

On the first visit, Sir Nicholas Jackson (whose grandfather was Cathedral Architect at a critical juncture in the Cathedral’s history – it was about to fall down and was saved by Jackson, Fox, an engineer and Walker, a diver) - knew the Cathedral’s Archaelogical Consultant, Dr John Crook, and the latter was kind enough to give the residents an introduction to the Cathedral and cover some of its fascinating history from the time that Winchester could be said to have been ‘the capital of England’. (The same history was covered by the excellent guides on the second visit).

Sir Nicholas was also found, to the residents’ astonishment, to have played in the Cathedral, a fact that the Drapers’ were accused of hiding, and this gave the visit added flavour as they surveyed the enormous Willis organ from the choir and wondered how such a monster could be tamed.

Although few residents climbed the stairs to see the Winchester Bible and none went up the tower, all were impressed with the beauty of the place and amazed at the extraordinary West Window which is made from fragments saved by the townspeople from the destruction wrought during the Reformation.

Most residents took their lunch in the Cathedral Cafe and then dispersed to the pedestrianised High St and beyond, some walking up to the Castle and into the Great Hall to see ‘King Arthur’s Round Table’ as well as the beautiful gates commissioned for Charles and Diana’s ill-fated marriage, and to survey the town below.

A few adventurous souls passed through the Cathedral Close and were taken on a tour of Winchester College by Herry Lawford, an Old Wykehamist, but only Christopher Barker passed by the meadows where Keats is said to have composed his ‘Ode to Autumn’, on his way to call on his old friend, the former Bishop of Winchester, who lives at St Cross.

Winchester is blessed with an extraordinary number of cafes and tea-rooms as well as fine gardens and riverside walks and pleasant hours were easily passed before the coach arrived for the journey home.

Favourite Places - Winchester Cathedral

Each time Winchester Cathedral yields more lovely views

The Law of Unintended Consequences

All bad precedents have their origin in measures that at the time seemed good - Julius Ceasar

Even the liberal lawyer Helena Kennedy QC admits that the best intentions in legal reform can sometimes produce unexpected and unpalatable consequences.

She is particularly concerned about the development of alternative systems of justice that bypass the courts. Restraining orders to protect the victims of domestic violence, once championed by lawyers like her, have in recent years been broadened in scope and application by politicians, particularly by David Blunkett, with very troubling results. She discusses this on BBC Radio 4 which can be heard iPlayer by clicking on the heading.

This reminds me of the deeply unwise extension of laws relating to terrorism; the flawed new law championed by the idiotic Jacqui Smith against the clients of prostitutes; and the Home Office's supine acceptance of a lop-sided extradition treaty with the United States as well as the extraordinarily ill-thought out vetting of people who regularly work with young children. In each of these instances, media-championed attention seems to bring out the worst in law-makers, who consistently forget that any change in the criminal law has far-reaching and easily unforeseen consequences.

The core of all this foolishness is the absence of wise and experienced minds in government. Wisdom, and the moral authority to say no to the silly ideas put forward by well-meaning but narrow-minded reformers, seems to have disappeared compeletely. The appointment of Jacqui Smith was possibly the lowest point the country has ever reached in its long and distinguished criminal justice history - the nation that created habeas corpus and based justice on establishing mens rea through transparent due proces is now allowing small minds to nibble away at these cornerstones of liberty.

Favourite Places

Wiltshire farmland after harvest. Click for a larger view

How to Draw - Kuo Hsi

Camellia by Masumi Yamanaka for the RHS

To lean to draw a flower, it is best to place a blossoming plant in a deep hollow in the ground and to look upon it. The all its qualities may be grasped. To learn to draw a bamboo, take a branch and cast its shadow upon a white wall on a moonlight night; then its true outline can be obtained. To learn to paint a landscape too, the method is the same. An artist should identify himself with the landscape and watch it until its significance is revealed to him.

Kuo Hsi, a painter of the Sung Period (AD1000)

This reminds me: 'What is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much truth as it can hold.'

Last Words

I have always admired the humble last words of Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds of any age:

'I do not know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'

This reminds me of Bagehot's reference to Homer and the sea:

A man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen the ocean. There is a great object of which he has no idea.

Wine Writings

It's a great art to be able to write well about wine. Most descriptions singularly fail to capture the experience. But this piece, ostensibly about birdwatching, comes close.

The first bird I searched for was the nightjar, which used to nest in the valley. Its song is like the stream of wine spilling from a height into a deep and booming cask. It is an odorous sound, with a bouquet that rises to the quiet sky. In the glare of day it would seem thinner and drier, but dusk mellows it and gives it vintage. If a song could smell, this song would smell of crushed grapes and almonds and dark wood. The sound spills out, and none of it is lost. Then it stops. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. But the ear hears it still, a prolonged and fading echo, draining and winding out among the surrounding trees.

The Peregrine by JA Baker

This imagery reminds me of the wine notes of Gerald Asher, whose wine descriptions are superb:

Chateau Lynch-Bages - just the wine for those who like the smell of Verdi. Dark colour, swashbuckling bouquet and ripe flayour. Ready for drinking but will hold well showing a gradual shift in style as it ages into graceful discretion.

Favourite Places - Lake Taupo

Lake Taupo, New Zealand. Click for a larger view.

Architecture and Modern Development

Chelsea Barracks is a huge cleared space on the left. On the right is the beautiful classical 18th Century architecture of the Royal Hospital and the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary which has recently been completed in complementary style
I am a great admirer of architects, and count some of the best ones as friends (Adrian Gale and Wilkinson Eyre) but the profession's outrageous reaction to the re-thinking of the Qatari development in Chelsea following the objections of the majority of local residents and of course Prince Charles, has been shocking. As a member of the Civic Society, I was happy to read this excellent piece* by Griff Rhys-Jones on his blog and who helps greatly to rebalance the debate towards the sensible and reasonable:

"There is enormous pressure to build houses at present. Some very small proportion will be built by architects. The majority will be ordered up by the yard by developers and will be blank and unimaginative dormitory housing. Why there should be so much opposition to a relatively small area of genuine experiment I have no idea. The worst enemy of the architectural profession is their own sensitivity. They are mired in orthodoxy, over-defensive of their clubbish practices and unschooled in principles of either science or aesthetics. So “fake” is derided and rigorous is upheld. There is no proper absolute moral value in this. It is matter of personal taste. The notion that “truth to materials” or “honesty” is holy writ should be treated with the same searching enquiry as any other mystical pronouncement. What is important is what works, what meets human approval. There has been an era of experiment without the slightest understanding of what experiment really means. If you try a process and the result is Cumbernauld you need to try again, and blame the experiment not the result. What Prince Charles is engaged in is a true experiment. It should be seen as part of the overall move to discover what can work in any age. And it should be recognized that the pattern of building for an age is partly created out of individuality not orthodoxy. I don’t particularly like Poundbury but I like it a lot more than the vast majority of the greenfield developments that you might visit. And I recognize that my objections are based on personal taste. I find the mad mullah, heretic-burning hysteria that breaks out from architects at its mention absurd and truly dangerous to their profession."

Griff Rhys-Jones on his Civic Society Blog August 2009

*I wouldn't have included poor Shane Warne in the diatribe however.

British Food - and Other Embarassing Observations

A lovely mapo tofu dish from Hong Kong. Photo by Kang of the London Eater blog

I often wonder how 300 years of interaction with delicious cuisines (think Chinese (via Hong Kong), Malaysian, Indian and Arabic) and living next door to (and sometimes actually in) France could have left us with nothing more than haggis, steak and kidney pie and fish and chips. (Alright, roast partridge and smoked salmon are superb, but they're not exactly everyday fare).

One answer is the incipient Puritanism that still affects many of us. But I fear that there's a deep-seated prejudice - probably originating from our being an island race like the Japanese (who suffer from similar prejudices but have created a superb cuisine nonetheless) - against assimilating other cuisines. We never married into other cultures until recently; part of the same prejudice, I suspect. Maybe the defining characteristic of the Brits is snobbery. Anyway, I'm sure Kate Fox would have it nailed.

The Joy of Fly Fishing

Fishing on the River Itchen. Photo by Derek Hampshire

I regret that I have never taken up fishing, apart from catching minnows in the Meon as a child and doing some desultory sea fishing from boats in Wales in my teens. I should have done so, particularly as we inherited my step-grandfather's rods and tackle. I always knew that he was a keen fisherman, having beats on the Bourne and the Test when he lived at Dunley, but only recently did I come across a monograph which he wrote in the thirties about some of his fishing experiences. It's a marvellous read, and the full text of it is on the Archive here. It's also been given to the Fly Fishers' Club where an old friend is Secretary.

Here are some extracts:


And then I discovered the dearest of all little rivers, the Leach, which rises among the downs and runs through Eastleach to join the Thames at Lechlade Mill. Eastleach was a much larger village in the past; there are actually two parishes Eastleach and Eastleach Turville. The two churches are hardly a stone's throw apart and the custom was to hold morning service in one and evening service in the other.

On the Leach, Haig, Downing, Bankes-Price, my eldest daughter Gladys, and I had great times. There was a good Mayfly rise and for some time before and after its appearance the Alder was very successful. Indeed, even while the mayfly was on, trout would often prefer the Alder.

As I have not kept a fishing diary, I can only trust to memory for some of the good days, but some recollections come back to me: A wonderful Mayfly rise, in heavy rain, Penson carrying a huge umbrella, pointing out the rises and laughing with delight as one fat trout after another came into the net.

Another day on the water below Arkell's when I waded a rather deep stretch of not more than a hundred yards and came out with nine good fish all on the Alder.

Still another day when my daughter, Gladys, and I got twenty-two trout before lunch an not one after, and once more when whole day's fishing had resulted in nothing up to six o'clock, then it suddenly turned cold and the fish came madly on and six brace were killed.

But every day on the Leach was delightful, whether the bag was heavy or light, and I remember every twist and turn of the stream with the regret that the fishing is no longer mine, but with the hope that my lucky successors have as good times as I had.

Here is my ideal:- to wade up a long and broad shallow in May or June, the water just deep enough to come halfway up one's thigh, and with patches of weed alternating with clear spaces of clean bright gravel; a gentle breeze at one's back, bright sunshine but with occasional clouds and a gentle shower every now and then; a rise of Olives or Iron Blues, just enough to bring the trout out from their shelters to take up feeding positions over the gravel patches, and with the light just right so that every fish can be seen.

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

I've posted a link to this before, but I can't resist putting it up again; it's brilliant!

Roses at My Window

One of the delights of summer - the early morning sun adding gold to these yellow roses at my study window

Chopin Society Recital

Superb recital of Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Chopin by Mikhail Kazakevich and Elena Zozina for The Chopin Society at St Gabriel's Church, Warwick Square . Click the heading to hear them playing Chopin's Rondo for two pianos in C, Op 73.

Favourite Cities - Bombay

The Gateway of India reflected in a window of the Taj with the Arabian Sea beyond

Mother of Cities to me,
For I was born in her gate,
Between the palms and the sea,
Where the world-end steamers wait.

Rudyard Kipling - Bombay

More Kipling here
More Taj here (Terror Attacks) and here
Memories of the Taj here 

Vitaï Lampada

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

Henry Newbolt 1897

More war poetry here

Commander Colin Balfour 1924 - 2009

Cmdr Colin Balfour, RN, DL, who died last week after suffering an eight-year illness brought on by a fall, was a most charming and amusing man and, with his wife Prue, one of my parents' closest friends. He was brought up in Oxfordshire and was an early friend of Bill Birch Reynardson's and was with him at Eton. Both of them went to war in 1942, Colin joining the navy and Bill the army, and saw a great deal of action (and Bill was wounded). Colin retired from the navy in 1952 and took up farming on his family's estate at Wintershill and in Scotland, which he loved. He was for many years chairman of the govenors of the local school, chairman and treasurer of the Parish Council and a church warden at Durley Church for 24 years. An excellent shot, a superb mimic and story-teller (and mathematician) and a kind and generous man, he and Prue maintained a wonderful social life in Hampshire and in Scotland. Among my parents' fondest memories (apart from many hilarious dinner parties) were when they visited them in the South of France and the annual cricket matches against the village, played on the pitch at Wintershill.  Prue, the daughter of an admiral, who died in 2016 was as charming and gregarious as he was and both enhanced the lives of all those around them.
I have a particular reason to be grateful to Colin and Prue as it was when my father was shooting at Wintershill that he met Bill Birch Reynardson who offered me a job at Thomas Miller where I happily remained for 39 years. 

Japanese Airports

Where would you rather be, in an interminable queue at Terminal 3, or at Haneda, Tokyo where despite the crowds, smiling girls help you with your luggage?

The Painted Hall, Greenwich

The Painted Hall at Greenwich - formerly in the Royal Naval College and now part of the National Maritime Museum - is such an impressive room; even more so than the Drapers' Hall It almost rivals the Palazzo Colonna in Rome. This was an RNLI dinner. Click here for some more photos

Favourite Places

No prizes for knowing where this is - but does anyone know of a finer setting for dinner/

Britain's Amazing Welfare System

A friend who hadn't worked for about twenty years and who was finding it hard to maintain herself recently applied for welfare. She now gets her housing paid for (she rents a modest room), plus £60 a week for food and necessaries. National Health Services - doctors, hospitals, medicines, dentists, glasses etc - are of course already free. Libraries, art galleries and museums are free. Tube and bus travel are free to over 60s. And one is allowed £15,000 of savings without affecting these benefits. Whatever anyone says about Britain, one has to be proud of the way its citizens are looked after when they get into difficulties.

Favourite Places - Novington Manor

A timeless scene - my parents at Novington Manor

Japan - Early Morning Chimes

Early morning chimes in a Japanese village. The chimes are played at 6.00, 12.00 and 17.00 each day. Click here to hear the evening chimes

Favourite Paintings

Kei is working in the arts at the moment and has found some lovely watercolours. Click the heading for more.

The Margaret Thatcher Infirmary

Margaret Thatcher poses with Chelsea Pensioners John Ley, David Poultney, John Walker and Charles McLaughlin 14th February 2008

The Margaret Thatcher Infirmary at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, was opened by Prince Charles earlier in the year, but on 25th June a dinner was held for the Friends of the Royal Hospital for Baroness Thatcher in whose honour it had been named. She was unfortunately unable to attend, having broken her arm in a fall. But she made a video which was shown and which brought warm applause from the Friends. Click here for some more photos from the evening.

Baseball by John Updike

I didn't appreciate baseball until I read this John Updike poem

Baseball

It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops
between your feet and overeager glove:
football can be learned,
and basketball finessed, but
there is no hiding from baseball
the fact that some are chosen
and some are not--those whose mitts
feel too left-handed,
who are scared at third base
of the pulled line drive,
and at first base are scared
of the shortstop's wild throw
that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

There is nowhere to hide when the ball's spotlight swivels your way, and the chatter around you falls still, and the mothers on the sidelines, your own among them, hold their breaths, and you whiff on a terrible pitch or in the infield achieve something with the ball so ridiculous you blush for years.

It's easy to do. Baseball was invented in America, where beneath the good cheer and sly jazz the chance of failure is everybody's right, beginning with baseball.

John Updike (2009)

Favourite Books

An image from the BBC series Wallender

For relaxation, I tend to read detective novels like the Inspector Wallender series by Henning Mankell. In the past I have loved Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie and Nagio Marsh, (not to mention Mickey Spillane), and also Jeffrey Deaver. But a new favourite has recently appeared - another Swedish writer called Stieg Larsson (1954-2004). He only wrote three books, but his first novel, 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' is terrific. He wrote two more (making the three 'The Millennium Series') before he died. The others are being published in English this summer. Look out for 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' and 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest'.

STOP PRESS: The English subtitled film of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' is now in the cinemas. 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' is out soon

Favourite Places

The finest restaurant venue in London - Gaucho Riverside, Richmond

The Scientist and the Universe III

Here in a dry California valley, outside a small town, a cathedral of light is to be dedicated on Friday. Like the cathedrals of antiquity, it is built on an unrivaled scale with unmatched technology, and it embodies a scientific doctrine that, if confirmed, might lift civilization to new heights.

“Bringing Star Power to Earth” reads a giant banner that was recently unfurled across a building the size of a football stadium.

The $3.5 billion site is known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. For more than half a century, physicists have dreamed of creating tiny stars that would inaugurate an era of bold science and cheap energy, and NIF is meant to kindle that blaze.

In theory, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

In February, NIF fired its 192 beams into its target chamber for the first time, and it now has the world’s most powerful laser, as well as the largest optical instrument ever built. But raising its energies still further to the point of ignition could take a year or more of experimentation and might, officials concede, prove daunting and perhaps impossible.

NIF is to fire its lasers for 30 years.

A mock capsule of hydrogen fuel is all of two millimeters wide, or less than a tenth of an inch.

'When it heats up, it blows in at a million miles an hour, moving that way for about five-billionths of a second. It gets to about the diameter of your hair. When it gets that small, that fast, you hit temperatures where it can start fusing — around 100 million degrees centigrade, or 180 million degrees Fahrenheit.'

The individual beams, he said, have to hit “within a few trillionths of a second” of one another if the fuel is to burn, and be pointed at the target with a precision “within half the diameter of your hair.”

The holy of holies is the room surrounding the target chamber. It looked like an engine room out of a science-fiction starship. The beam lines — now welters of silvery metal filled with giant crystals that shifted the concentrated light to higher frequencies — converged on the chamber’s blue wall. Its surface was dotted with silvery portholes where complex sensors could be placed to evaluate the tiny blasts.

“Of course it is,” he said. Taking on big projects that challenge the imagination “is who we are as a species.”

Extract from the IHT

The Scientist and the Universe II

Extracts from a speech made by the then President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the official inauguration of the Southern Africa Large Telescope (SALT) November 2005


Even those of us who know nothing about astronomy have awaited this day with great anticipation, feeling, perhaps instinctively, that this giant eye in the Karoo would tell us as yet unknown and exciting things about ourselves.

We have felt our heartbeats quicken as we were told that SALT would have the power to tackle fundamental questions about the Universe, such as:
* what was the universe like when the first stars and galaxies were forming?
* what kind of worlds orbits other suns?
* how are the stars in nearby galaxies different from those in the solar neighbourhood?
* what can these stars tells us about the scale and age of the universe?
* how do quasars and gamma rays outshine trillions of stars like the sun?

This observatory is a place dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. Its sole purpose is the discovery of the unknown, and therefore the further liberation of humanity from blind action informed by superstition that derives from failure to fathom the regularities and imperatives of the infinite natural world.

Hopefully, the daily voyages of discovery into outer space that will be undertaken from this place of scientific inquiry will help millions in our country, our continent and the world to repudiate the fear of knowledge that the Englishman, Thomas Gray, an Old Etonian, sought to celebrate when he said, in his “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”,

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

Out of this place, enveloped by the quiet peace of the Karoo and its starlit skies, must and will come the message that thought is humanity’s stepladder out of Hades - that ignorance is nothing but condemnation to live for eternity in the world inhabited by the souls of the dead.

By communicating to all humanity the evolving and ever-changing truths about the universe, this observatory, empowered by cutting edge science, engineering and technology, and staffed by the most excellent and daring inquiring minds, must help to free us from the seductive grip of the astrologers and the false consciousness that wears the fine apparel of pernicious common sense.

Thus would we gain further mastery over our actions as human beings, as did Edmund, son of the Duke of Gloucester born out of wedlock, when, in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, repudiating the falsification of the influence of the universe of the stars on his fate, he said:

“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeit of our own behaviour - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whore master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising.”

The great minds gathered here today to inaugurate the Southern Africa Large Telescope have the possibility to peer into ordinarily unimaginable vistas of time and space, to discover what the universe was like, when the first stars and galaxies were forming.

You will therefore not find it difficult to understand our excitement that even as we probe outer space from here, elsewhere in our country, the host of SALT, we also have the possibility to continue investigating what happened on the tiny planet we call the earth, relevant to the formation and evolution of plant, animal and human life as we have come to know them.

Let me illustrate what I am talking about. Fossils of some of the oldest organisms on earth have been found in the Barberton sequence, towards our North East, dated at approximately 3 billion years. In the period before some of the world’s first dinosaurs walked the earth, there was already abundant plant and animal life in the same Karoo basin where SALT stands, leaving behind an unsurpassed record of the ancestry of mammals.

The largest collection of synapsids (mammal-like reptiles) are to be found in the Karoo succession, documenting step by step, over a period of 50 million years, the origin of mammals from primitive reptilian stock.

250 million years ago during the late Permian age, this area consisted of an inland sea surrounded by a vast alluvial plain. At the time, several Mississippi-sized rivers flowed northwards out of a mountain range some 1 000 km to the South. The most common animals living on the flood plains during this period were therapid reptiles, more commonly known as mammal-like reptiles.

Fossils found here and South America has provided evidence to substantiate the hypothesis of continental drift, and therefore the existence in the distant past of the so-called super-continent of Gondwanaland.

Three million years ago, South Africa was also home to a vulnerable new line of primates, the Australopithecines, which eventually gave rise to humans. Adding to the long list of South African hominids, which include fossils of Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus, Homo habilis and Homo sapiens, the oldest identifiable Homo sapiens fossils in the world (dated at approximately 110 000 years) have been found here.

It is on the basis of this vast paleontogical storehouse, supported by additional evidence from elsewhere on our continent, that scientists have come to the firm conclusion that our country is the Cradle of Humanity.

It therefore seemed right, and a perfect expression of the discovered symmetry of the evolution of nature, that this extraordinary construct of the human intellect, the Southern Africa Large Telescope, constructed to probe the formation of our Universe, should be based here, the domicile of so much that represents what constitutes historical and living reality of all life on Planet Earth, itself the product of billions of years of the evolution of the Universe.

To us, as South Africans, it has seemed right that for us as human beings to continue the search for the origins of the infinite beginnings of the universe, we should locate that inquiry, as represented by SALT, in the very geographic space that gave birth to homo sapiens.

We have said this to ourselves knowing that the outward journey of homo sapiens from Africa into the rest of our planet, though resulting in the formation of a diverse human family, has nevertheless never subtracted from the fact that the Cradle of Humanity remains, still, the home of all humanity, as demonstrated by the population inflows since our liberation in 1994.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet was outraged to discover the cold disloyalty of his mother, who would not give even limited time to mourn the death of her husband and Hamlet’s father, the King of Denmark, before entering into an amorous relationship with the King’s brother, Hamlet’s uncle. These goings-on seemed as unnatural as they were unconscionable.

Seeking to escape from this confirmed but painful and unbearable knowledge, Hamlet cried out:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

The scientific journey on which we will embark from today onwards at this Large Telescope will take us far beyond a world that presents itself as an unweeded garden that grows to seed, populated by things rank and gross in nature.

It will not give birth to images that suggest that the uses of the universe are but weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.

Surely, this new journey will speak of a world made exciting by the rapid progression away from everything that is weary, stale, flat and unprofitable in human knowledge, the lifting of the dark and menacing shadows of ignorance and prejudice about the origin of the universe, that circumscribe our very ability to eat, live and think.

With thanks to Philip Wetton (who has endowed the Chair of Astrophysics at Oxford) for pointing me to this speech - as well as describing his visit to CERN

For a view with which Mbeki might disagree, see The Scientist and the Universe

Favourite Places - Westminster Abbey

An organ recital in Westminster Abbey by Alistair Reid, the assistant organist at Coventry Cathedral. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to video it.

Coventry Cathedral - the Sutherland Tapestry

The Sutherland Tapestry and the pipes of the huge Harrison organ. Click the heading for some more photos.

Another visit to Coventry Cathedral, following the induction of Sir Alfred Herbert into Coventry's Walk of Fame. The cathedral yields more with each visit; this time close-ups of the Sutherland tapestry 'Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph' as well as the Beardsley Cross. Sutherland’s work took ten years to design, contains over 900 colours and weighs over one tonne. It was woven by the Frères Pinton at Felletin in France, and at 74 ft high, it was the greatest tapestry in the world when it was first installed.

Coventry's Walk of Fame

Coventry has created a 'Walk of Fame' in Priory Place near the Cathedral where the most famous of those with links to the city (as chosen by the public) are commemorated by plaques set into the pavement.

On Saturday 26th May, Sir Alfred Herbert's plaque was unveiled at a ceremony at which my brother Piers and I represented the family. Click here for Herry's speech.

Sir Alfred's gifts to the city were many, and some are enumerated in the brochure accompanying the first opening of The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.

Rudyard Kipling's 'If'

Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son.
Rudyard Kipling

How similar this is to these sayings attributed to Mother Teresa

And related to Henry Newbolt's famous poem Vitaï Lampada

Henry James said of him: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he declined.

Kipling was born in India. I have always found these lines most moving, knowing the scene well myself. 

Fine Cell Work at the Leathersellers' Hall

Fine Cell Work, the charity that teaches fine needlework to prison inmates and sells their work on their behalf, is holding a Christmas selling exhibition and fund-raising reception at Leathersellers Hall on the 19th of November 2009. After benefiting greatly from the support of the Clothworkers and Drapers Companies at similar occasions in 2007 and 2008, an annual “Livery Company” event is becoming a fixture in the charity’s calendar.

The reception is intended not only to raise revenue for the charity’s expansion of its work to more inmates but also to raise awareness about the current plight of our overcrowded prisons.

Fine Cell Work is a uniquely creative charity established twelve years ago to train prison inmates to do professional embroidery and quilting in the long hours when they are locked in their cells. The charity now employs 340 inmates (eighty percent of them men), many of whom stitch for as long as 40 hours a week. Many send the money they earn back to families or save it for their release.

It is well known that ex-offenders who have some financial resources and have been able to maintain their links with families are less likely to re-offend. One said, “You feel you’re supporting yourself. It’s a comfort to know that. I feel proud I’ve been given something to achieve to get pride and self-respect.”

The inmates’ beautiful cushions, rugs and quilts have sold on three continents and received coverage in more than sixty publications. In 2008 Fine Cell Work sold £177,425 of soft furnishings hand-made in prison, proving that offenders are capable of producing the highest quality work. The inmates received a third of sales and numerous thank-you letters from customers. This is immensely good for their self-esteem and their employability after release.

Designers with and for whom Fine Cell has worked include Nina Campbell, Chester Jones, Allegra Hicks, Nicholas Haslam, John Stefanidis, Melissa Wyndham and many others. Prisoners are currently also working on commissions for quilts for the V & A and a wall hanging for the Jerwood Foundation, not to mention commissions for several livery companies and for English Heritage itself.

Hello

A photo of my PC running Hello in January 2005. Don't you love the pre-iPhone technology and my old Revo - which actually handled my address book better than any stuff today...

I have come late to the realisation that Hello, a free Picasa add-on from Google, is no more. It was for a few short years undoubtedly the best photo and chat-sharing program available, and even now, despite the creation of great programs such as Flickr, it has not been approached - let alone bettered - in power, ease of use or life-enhancing facility.

With Hello one could select any photo (or many) on one's hard disc and with a click, could send it (or many) practically instantaneously to any friend who had downloaded the software, while at the same time carrying on the easiest of chats in a large and secure space alongside. The photos appeared hi-res, and would be automatically downloaded to 'My Pictures/Hello' on the recipient's computer (PC only), obviating the need to save anything. Even the chat was permanently and automatically saved. And if one sent a photo by mistake, it could be recalled. How cool is that?

Delightful touches abounded: if one happened to type 'love', a shower of hearts would fall across the friend's screen.

I don't know for sure, but I think Hello used peer-to-peer technology, as there was almost no lag in transmission and it was totally private.

Nothing as simple, moving and effective has yet been created to take its place. Why on earth has Google discontinued it?

Join the 'Bring Back Hello' Group on Facebook!

Favourite Poetry - La Strada

La Strada

A dollar got you a folding chair in the drafty lecture hall
with a handful of other wretched grad students.

Then the big reels and low-tech chatter of a sixteen-millimeter projector.

La Strada. Rashomon. HMS Potemkin. La Belle e le Béte, before Disney got his hands on it.

And The Bicycle Thief, and for God's sake, La Strada.

You can't find them at the video store anymore. Only the latest G-rated animated pixilated computer-generated prequels.

That's just the way it goes.

Even if you could, you'd see them on DVD, restored, colorized, scratch-free,on a plasma-screen TV.

With your wife, your dog, your degree. You'd get up to answer the phone, check on the baby.

You're just not young enough, or poor enough, or miserable enough anymore to see--really see

Les Enfants du Paradis, or Ikiru, or The 400 Blows. Or, for God's sake, La Strada.

George Bilgere

Games People Play

I read Eric Berne's book 'Games People Play' many years ago, and it continues to illuminate how and why people behave as they do. Sally Bampton, who's wonderful advice articles are the only thing I look at in the Sunday papers, referred to it recently and I went back to read it again.

Games People Play

People often live their lives by consistently and predictably playing out identifiable games in their inner and interpersonal relationships. They play games to avoid reality, conceal ulterior motives, rationalize their reactive behavior or to avoid the responsibility of active participation in life situations. The principal characteristics of these games are that they are played by the child or parent ego and could generally be ended quickly if people remained the 'adult' state (generally known as 'being a grown up')

Most games have some or all of these characteristics:

They are repetitive: people play out their favorite game time and time again
They are played without adult awareness. People start and get drawn into their game without being aware they are doing it — until the game is finished and they then ask themselves: “how did that happen?”
There is always something happening underneath the surface that is very different from what the outside world sees happening. For example, I may tell my wife that everything is fine when, in fact, I am refusing to get into a conversation with her because I am angry.

Some of the more common games are:

Now I've Got You, You Son-of-a Bitch (NIGYSOB)

Used to justify anger that has built up over an extended time period. The aggressor (usually unconscious) identifies their victim, sets up a trap and springs it as a form of getting even or gaining perceived power.

Ain' t It Awful

Person overtly expresses distress, but it is covertly gratified at the prospect of the satisfaction they can wring from their misfortune.

Blemish

Person seeks to find the blemish or weakness in another or themselves. They exploit others around the discovered blemish from an authoritarian posture. In themselves, it is used for negative reinforcement for inability to perform.

Why Don't you... Yes, But

Played out as a person presents a problem while others present solutions — each beginning with “Why don’t you...?” followed by the objection, “Yes, but...”. The payoff is the silence or masked objection when the solution giver has exhausted their data bank of solutions. This gives the “Yes, but” player evidence that they have won by demonstrating that it is the other person who is inadequate.

If It Weren't For You

Common games played between spouses as a means of avoiding responsibility for individual decisions.

Look What You Made Me Do

Played by someone who is feeling hurt and angry, who becomes engrossed in an activity which tends to isolate them from people. When interrupted, an accident or error occurs. Player then turns on the interrupter. Also used to avoid failure in a task the player is angry about having to do or does not know exactly how to do.

Let's You and Him Fight

Player (often a woman) maneuvers two others into fighting. She aligns herself with the winner. Sometimes, while the two are fighting, she will align herself with a third party who appears to be above fighting or sees honest competition as a fool's game.

Wooden Leg

Used to excuse dysfunctional behavior. “What do you expect of a person with a wooden leg?” Often used in statement form, i.e., “I'm a redhead and have a temper”, or “I drink because I’m Irish”, etc.

Kick Me

Played by people whose social manner invites them to be kicked. If people will not kick them, they will behave more and more provocatively until they have exceeded the limits, thereby forcing them to oblige. The jilted. . .the job losers.., the rejected.

Conditional Love

I will love you if... then comes the checklist. If you don’t accept my checklist in every way, I’ll withdraw attention, acceptance, affection.

Push-Pull ('The Cat')

Played by people who have a fear of closeness/intimacy but are also afraid of being left alone. They will entice or seduce the other person to come close, open up and then when the person has opened up, the push-pull player will retreat, leaving the other person confused.

The Three Roles in Games

All games are played unconsciously when we experience a threat. Game playing serves the purpose of blaming others for our bad feelings/experience. Below are the three role-positions we can play and the characteristics of those roles:

Each one of us employs consistent patterns of defensiveness to protect our self-image from people and situations that we subconsciously sense are a threat or even an outright assault. We created ourselves that way pretty early in life, when we thought that’s what we had to do to survive, to be accepted, to fit in.

These “games” are subtle. The bad feelings involved and the destructive outcomes are readily observable, but generally after they have taken their toll in hurt feelings, fractured relationships, repeated conflict, etc.

Berne believed that if he could help us become more familiar with these unaware game patterns with their typical “play-out” steps and sequencing, we would be able to recognize them more readily. Then we could work on getting better at catching them really early, so we could make either/both of two informed choices:

In games, there are at least two, and sometimes three, possible roles people can choose to play, and the choice is always made from unawareness. These roles are: Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor.

A game can be initiated from any position, and the other player(s) can join in from any other position. In some games, players move from one role to another during the play out of the game. Often, one player is engaged in a game and the other player is working a different game in response.

In every game, the people who are part of the game — persecutors, victims, rescuers — almost always end up with a bad feeling. They know something is going wrong, or has gone wrong, and they do not know how to fix it.

Persecutor Games

A persecutor tends to put people down, belittle them, diminish them. His/her game usually begins from the unaware belief that “the best defense is a good offense”.

NIGYSOB

Manager Simon feels growing doubts about his own capacity to complete a project. He “delegates” the project to a subordinate, Georgie. Simon picks Georgie because she doesn’t usually question or challenge his motives or responsibility.

Since Simon wants to be seen as a responsible manager, he provides some seemingly appropriate level of resources (monetary, human, technical) to help Georgie in her work. A timeline is set, which usually is unrealistic given Georgie’s competency, resources or other responsibilities. Simon leaves the task completely in Georgie’s hands, or at best, provides occasional and brief “check-ins” to see how the job is going. Georgie can be counted on to tell him the job is going well, to protect her own inadequacy, and because she hopes that she will be able to pull it off by the deadline. Of course, Georgie comes up short, and when Simon finally checks on the job and finds out, he attacks Georgie and blames her for making a mess of the job. Having set her up to fail, he is able to point to her failure as the defense against his own responsibility in the failure: “It just proves if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

Blemish

Naomi, the Audit Manager in the Finance Department, is presented with a first draft audit report by Alissa. Naomi looks it over, and then asks Alissa: “How long did it take you to do this?” “Three weeks” Naomi says. Naomi: “I can’t believe you could spend that much time on this and here are three typos right here on the first page!”

This game is set up by Naomi, who forgets (?) she has not informed Alissa that she expects her to check for misspelled words as a standard procedure before presenting her a draft report for review. Further, Naomi can demonstrate how smart she is to be able to notice spelling errors, and how dumb Alissa is to have made them. Naomi gets to feel angry (disappointed) in Alissa. Alissa gets to feel stupid and maybe even hurt, since Naomi did not recognize the hard work that she put into doing and reporting what she saw as the major task: correctly accounting for the audit.

Gotcha

Charlie is skeptical about Frances’s capability to lead the marketing campaign to win back market share from their competitor. It shows up in a meeting in front of her boss:

Charlie: “Would you say that we are positioning ourselves to fend off the threat from Wackie Co?”

Frances: “Of course. This marketing strategy is targeted directly at their weakness”

Charlie: “How much of a market share do they have with their product?”

Frances: “I’m not really sure. Probably less than 10%”

Tim: (GOTCHA!) “You don’t know what you’re talking about! The Financial Times article yesterday quotes Deloittes saying that Wackie has 60% market share in Manchester, London and York. Your strategy may help us stay on top, but it sure isn’t aggressive enough to win back market share in those areas!”

Similar to NIGYSOB, this game has more of an ambush flavor.

Top Dog

A person plays this game to stay on top, to not lose, and to make the other person lose. So any number of rationalizations get made by the bully to justify their position. They find this most useful when they can get someone to argue with them, but they will usually target someone whom they can count on to (eventually) buckle under and let them win.

Victim Games

For inveterate players of victim games, the best winning strategy is to take it on the chin and either come back for more or run from the threat. That’s because the victim believes: “I’m not capable of solving my own problems — you must do it for me.”

Kick Me/Underdog

Herry agrees to work on a project for his superior, Ayako. Ayako seems thrilled to have him. It’s widely known that she has pretty high standards, but neither Herry nor Ayako initiate any discussion of expectations for the project. But when Herry delivers the work product to Ayako, she immediately butchers it! Herry has set himself up for Ayako to persecute him, but he blames her for his anger and hurt, rather than acknowledging his role in the drama: not getting specific enough up front to be able to do a good job.

Poor Me, Pity Me: Ain't It Awful?

Kate always has an excuse. Like the schoolgirl who can never turn in her homework “because the dog ate it,” Kate similarly finds reasons beyond her control that things don’t work for her (Ain’t it Awful?) Her car is in the garage, so she can’t make the meeting; her neighbour has to go to the hospital and she spent time watching her children so she was late with her mortgage payment; she didn’t get paper for the printer because she only buys 50% recycled content and the store only had 25%; etc. She will engage others to try to help her overcome her difficulties (rescue her), but she really doesn’t want their help. . . she just wants to go on being a victim (Poor Me, Pity Me)

Withhold/Withdraw

Nick gets upset whenever Julian comes to class. Julian always speaks with the other classmates in their team projects, and has a charisma about him to which the other classmates gravitate. Although Nick has been named team coordinator, it is clear that Julian has the real personal power. So Nick just clams up, doesn’t engage Julian in conversation, will not confront Julian with his feelings. He would rather experience the smoldering hurt of the victim role and blame Julian’s persecution.

Wooden Leg/Threadbare

These games are similar, but with different rationales.

In Wooden Leg, Joanna blames her lack of promotion for having been stuck with Roger, not known to be a strong leader (her Wooden Leg that keeps her from advancing more quickly). Although Joanna has done nothing to distinguish herself while working for Roger, she blames him for her lack of advancement, and looks for someone to come rescue her.

In Threadbare, Richard blames his poor performance on the outdated computer system that is provided for him. He reasons that it is the computer, rather than his own lack of competence or initiative, that keeps him from better performance, despite the fact that the others in his department produce better results with the same kind of resources. At any rate, he can blame his hurt on the mangers who won’t buy him a new computer (the imaginary persecutors), while beseeching them to rescue him by getting him a better system

Hurried/Harried/Hassled

Belinda can’t ever seem to get her life under control. She always seems to have more on her plate than she can take care of, and she is frenetically flying from one project and meeting to another. Whether it’s servicing her accounts, serving as Amnesty International coordinator or preparing birthday surprises for her fellow employees, neighbours and family, she is always busy. Although she may have good intentions, she fails to do anything really well, and she blames her failures on all her responsibilities, or even her boss or staff, who “expect” her to fulfill all these responsibilities. She chooses not to see that she is the one who piled on each of her responsibilities. It’s easier and more comfortable to blame her harried/hassled feelings on the “expectations of others.”

Look How Hard I Tried

Edward worked hard at finishing the audit, spending many late nights at the office. Unfortunately, he did not use standard auditing procedures, nor did he ask for assistance in framing how he would do the audit. When his superior sees his report, she can’t believe he could work that hard for something that doesn’t present what she know their clients need to guide their decisions. She questions his competence, to which he can defend his actions stating “Look How Hard I Tried.’ He clings to the belief that effort should be the measuring stick instead of results, and so remains trapped in a victim role.

Sunnyside Up/Pollyanna

Richard calls himself an optimist. Whenever something goes wrong, he always “looks on the bright side of things.” When Gazette Ltd canceled their account with him, he just smiled and said it must have been for the best, and “we’ll keep ‘em next time”. He skirts the negatives in his world, rationalizing that it doesn’t do him any good anyway. Through his Pollyanna outlook, he is seeking to rescue himself from fear and hurt that things don’t always go well in the world.

While optimism can engender high spirits and a can-do environment, Richard’s unconsciously extreme attitude shuts him off from learning that comes from experiencing failing. This game can be played very subtly, with many rationalizations, thus it is very hard for the Self-rescuer to root out and identify.

Why Don't You...Yes, But...

This game usually demonstrates the role-shift possibilities very dramatically. The victim subtly seeking to be rescued finds him/herself sliding into the role of persecuting his/her rescuer and turning him or her into the victim.

Louise tells Tom about the difficulties in her office. No one will follow the scheduling procedure that she set up, even though th.ey swore to her that they would. She comes to Tom dripping frustration and hurt.

Louise: “What am I going to do? I’ve tried everything! This whole thing is coming apart. And, I’m going to look really bad before this is over.”

Tom: “Why don’t you talk to them about it?”

Louise: “Well, I tried, but they still keep on avoiding following through.”

Tom: “Well, why don’t you reward those that do keep up with their schedule?”

Louise: “That won’t work because there’s only one out of nine that do it!”

Tom: “Why don’t you publish their names and follow-through reports?”

Louise: “Why don’t you just listen to me and let me figure it out on my own! I was just trying to tell you how I feel for crying out loud!”

Whether the victim turns persecutor and the rescuer turns victim can occur relatively quickly as in this scenario. It can also occur over a longer duration. Either way, the Why Don ‘t You... Yes, But...garnes is a defensive strategy for the rescuer who may be feeling afraid that he won’t be able to solve the problem and rescue the victim, and therefore risk being seen as incompetent, not pleasing, irresponsible, not a very effective problem-solver. When he can’t solve the problem, he shifts himself (frequently with help) into the victim role, or rationalizes it as the other person’s fault, reinforcing his own rescuer-role and script.

I Was Only Trying to Help!

This is the painful, angry end-game of the failed rescuer. Once Louise turns on Tom, he replies that he was only trying to help. This justification is really more of a victim game than a rescuer game in its initial response. However, as the discussion continues, the premise becomes that the rescuer sees himself as justified in his role, returning the victim to theirs. Continuing from the dialogue above:

Tom: “Louise, you know I was only trying to help. If you don’t want my help, then why did you ask for it?”

Louise: “I didn’t ask for it. I was just telling you about what’s going on at work, and you just started telling me what to do.”

Tom: “No, I was making suggestions about what you could do.”

Louise: “Well, it sounded like you were telling me what to do.”